La colecistectomia videolaparoscopica elettiva: i limiti di un sogno ormai realtà

La tecnica laparoscopica per la colecistectomia elettiva è il capolinea di un’evoluzione volta a ridurre ai minimi termini la via d’accesso. Abbiamo analizzato dal 1° gennaio 2004 al 31 dicembre 2006 un totale di 5515 interventi di colecistectomia, di cui 4877 laparoscopici e 635 in tecnica tradizionale. Le complicanze e le diagnosi aggiuntive sono state codificate ricercandole nel database delle SDO della Regione Lombardia. La morbilità è stata di 82 casi (12.9%) con la tecnica tradizionale e da 109 casi (2.23%) con la tecnica laparoscopica; la mortalità è stata di 11 casi (1.73%) con la tecnica tradizionale e di 1 caso (0.02%) con la tecnica laparoscopia. Le giornate di degenza media sono state 14.40 con la tecnica tradizionale e 4.75 con la tecnica laparoscopia La morbilità nella tecnica open è sei volte superiore rispetto alla tecnica laparoscopica. Questo divario tra le due tecniche è presente in tutte le casistiche mondiali ed è il risultato della mini-invasività della laparoscopia rispetto all’incisione laparotomica, condizione che spiega e giustifica anche la differenza per quanto riguarda i giorni di degenza media in favore ovviamente della tecnica laparoscopia. La mortalità così alta nella tecnica tradizionale rispetto alla laparoscopia è da attribuirsi ai casi selezionati La prima importante osservazione è che nei nostri ospedali, come in tutti i migliori del mondo, la colecistectomia laparoscopica è diventata il gold standard di trattamento della colelitiasi e la seconda è che sempre di più la tecnica open è riservata alla patologia complicata della litiasi della colecisti e questo quindi ne giustifica l’importante divario, rispetto alla tecnica laparoscopica, per quanto concerne le giornate di degenza, la morbilità e la mortalità

Is the comprehension of idiomatic sentences indeed impaired in paranoid Schizophrenia? A window into semantic processing deficits

Schizophrenia patients have been reported to be more impaired in comprehending non-literal than literal language since early studies on proverbs. Preference for literal rather than figurative interpretations continues to be documented. The main aim of this study was to establish whether patients are indeed able to use combinatorial semantic processing to comprehend literal sentences and both combinatorial analysis, and retrieval of pre-stored meanings to comprehend idiomatic sentences. The study employed a sentence continuation task in which subjects were asked to decide whether a target word was a sensible continuation of a previous sentence fragment to investigate idiomatic and literal sentence comprehension in patients with paranoid schizophrenia. Patients and healthy controls were faster in accepting sensible continuations than in rejecting non-sensible ones in both literal and idiomatic sentences. Patients were as accurate as controls in comprehending literal and idiomatic sentences, but they were overall slower than controls in all conditions. Once the contribution of cognitive covariates was partialled out, the response times (RTs) to sensible idiomatic continuations of patients did not significantly differ from those of controls. This suggests that the state of residual schizophrenia did not contribute to slower processing of sensible idioms above and beyond the cognitive deficits that are typically associated with schizophrenia

Is Black Always the Opposite of White? An Investigation on the Comprehension of Antonyms in People with Schizophrenia and in Healthy Participants

The present investigation sought to expand our understanding of the cognitive processes underlying the recognition of antonyms and to evaluate whether these processes differed in patients with schizophrenia and in healthy controls. Antonymy is the most robust of the lexico-semantic relations and is relevant to both the mental organization of the lexicon and the organization of coherent discourse, as attested by the resurgence of interest in antonymy in the linguistic and psychological domains. In contrast, the vast literature on semantic processing in schizophrenia almost ignored antonymy. In this study, we tested the online comprehension of antonyms in 39 Italian patients with paranoid schizophrenia and in an equal number of pairwise-matched healthy controls. Participants read a definitional sentence fragment (e.g., the opposite of black is), followed by the correct antonym (white) or by a semantically unrelated word (nice), and judged whether or not the target word was correct. Patients were rather accurate in identifying antonyms, but compared to controls, they showed longer response times and higher priming scores, suggesting an exaggerated contextual facilitation. Presumably, this reflects a deficient controlled semantic processing and an overreliance on stored semantic representation

Simultaneous idiopathic segmental infarction of the great omentum and acute appendicitis: a rare association

Idiopathic segmental infarction of the greater omentum is an uncommon cause of acute abdomen. The etiology is still unclear and the symptoms mimic acute appendicitis. Its presentation simultaneously with acute appendicitis is still more infrequent. We present a case of a 47-year old woman without significant previous medical history, admitted with an acute abdomen, in which the clinical diagnosis was acute appendicitis and in whom an infarcted segment of right side of the greater omentum was also found at laparotomy. As the etiology is unknown, we highlighted some of the possible theories, and emphasize the importance of omental infarction even in the presence of acute appendicitis as a coincident intraperitoneal pathological condition

Harmonizing methods for wildlife abundance estimation and pathogen detection in Europe-a questionnaire survey on three selected host-pathogen combinations

__Background:__ The need for wildlife health surveillance as part of disease control in wildlife, domestic animals and humans on the global level is widely recognized. However, the objectives, methods and intensity of existing wildlife health surveillance programs vary greatly among European countries, resulting in a patchwork of data that are difficult to merge and compare. This survey aimed at evaluating the need and potential for data harmonization in wildlife health in Europe. The specific objective was to collect information on methods currently used to estimate host abundance and pathogen prevalence. Questionnaires were designed t

Production of He-4 and (4) in Pb-Pb collisions at root(NN)-N-S=2.76 TeV at the LHC

Results on the production of He-4 and (4) nuclei in Pb-Pb collisions at root(NN)-N-S = 2.76 TeV in the rapidity range vertical bar y vertical bar <1, using the ALICE detector, are presented in this paper. The rapidity densities corresponding to 0-10% central events are found to be dN/dy4(He) = (0.8 +/- 0.4 (stat) +/- 0.3 (syst)) x 10(-6) and dN/dy4 = (1.1 +/- 0.4 (stat) +/- 0.2 (syst)) x 10(-6), respectively. This is in agreement with the statistical thermal model expectation assuming the same chemical freeze-out temperature (T-chem = 156 MeV) as for light hadrons. The measured ratio of (4)/He-4 is 1.4 +/- 0.8 (stat) +/- 0.5 (syst). (C) 2018 Published by Elsevier B.V.Peer reviewe